On-Premise Is Down Only 2.4%. Off-Premise Is Down 7.5%
Plus tasting room scripts that sell by occasion, a one-page brand voice guide, and $1,285 in canceled software.
Jeremy Young5 min read
Today's Alcohol Industry Insider Newsletter
What's inside:
📊 Three Numbers: On-Premise Is Down Only 2.4% While Off-Premise Falls 7.5%
🔁 Sales and Retention Ideas: Turn tech sheets into tasting room scripts that sell by occasion
💡 AI Prompts You Can Use: Turn old emails and web copy into a one-page brand voice guide
💡 AI Prompts You Can Use: Turn a free SEO audit into a 30-day fix list you can hand to one person
🛠️ Try These Tools: Muse, Meta's free AI assistant, can audit the software you forgot you're paying for
On-Premise Is Down Only 2.4% While Off-Premise Falls 7.5%
2.4% On-premise wine and spirits volume and value both fell just 2.4% over the last 12 months, while off-premise fell 7.5% by value, according to SipSource data reported by Shane English in Shanken News Daily (October 5, 2026). Restaurants, bars, and hotels deserve a bigger share of your sample budget and rep time this quarter than another chain shelf reset.
0.9% Wine priced $20 to $30 posted 0.9% revenue growth over the last year, the one bright spot while sub-$16 wine kept struggling, per SipSource in Shanken News Daily (October 5, 2026). If you have a SKU sitting at $17 or $18, that is the band to move into rather than discounting down.
11% Wine-based RTDs are forecast to reach nearly 11% of total wine volume by 2030, up from 6% last year, according to Shanken's Impact Databank Review and Forecast, 2026 Edition, reported by Juan Banaag (October 5, 2026). Total wine depletions drop below 300 million cases this year, so the growth you can actually chase is in smaller formats and cocktail-style packaging.
Pull your own sales by channel and price band this week and see which of these three lines your business is sitting on.
Turn tech sheets into tasting room scripts that sell by occasion
Most tasting room staff are handed a binder of tech sheets and told to "know the wines." So they recite pH, clone numbers, and barrel regimen. Guests nod politely and buy one bottle. The staff who sell three bottles and a membership are doing something different: they tell the guest when to drink it, with what, and with whom.
That translation is exactly what Claude is good at.
What to prepare (15 minutes)
Collect the tech sheet or tasting note for every wine, beer, or spirit in your current flight. PDFs are fine. So are pasted paragraphs from your website.
Note your current price per bottle or can, plus your club or loyalty tiers and their real benefits (discount, shipment frequency, pickup party, allocation access).
Write one line on who actually walks in: weekend couples, bachelorette groups, trade buyers, locals after work.
Set it up in Claude
Go to claude.ai and create a Project. Projects hold standing context for every chat inside them, so upload your tech sheets, price list, and club details once and they apply to everything you ask afterward. Then start a new chat inside that Project and paste the prompt below.
A brewery runs this on a taproom board instead of a flight. A distillery runs it on a four-pour whiskey lineup and swaps the club ask for a barrel pick or bottle club. A retail shop runs it on the six bottles in the weekend tasting and ends with an email signup instead. A distributor rep runs it on a supplier's sheet to build a 90-second on-premise pitch.
After you get the scripts, print them on one card per wine and have staff read them aloud once in a pre-shift. Anything they stumble over is not how people talk. Send it back to Claude and ask for a plainer version.
Good output looks like this: every pour has a named occasion, a food it goes with, and one surprising detail, and the club ask sounds like a recommendation rather than a pitch.
You are a tasting room sales trainer who has coached staff at small wineries, breweries, and distilleries. You know that guests buy occasions, not technical specifications.
My business: [WINERY / BREWERY / DISTILLERY NAME], located in [REGION].
Who actually walks in: [e.g., weekend couples 35 to 60, bachelorette groups on Saturdays, locals after work on Fridays]
Our brand voice: [e.g., warm and unpretentious / polished and quiet / funny and irreverent]
Our tasting flight, in pour order: [LIST EACH PRODUCT, PRICE, AND PASTE OR ATTACH THE TECH SHEET OR TASTING NOTE]
Our club or loyalty program: [NAME, PRICE, SHIPMENT FREQUENCY, REAL BENEFITS, AND THE DISCOUNT]
Average guest spend today: [AMOUNT, or write "unknown"]
For each product in the flight, write a script block with:
1. The 15-second open. One sentence a staff member says while pouring. No jargon, no pH, no clone numbers unless the detail is genuinely interesting to a normal person.
2. The occasion. Exactly when and where a guest should drink this, and who they would be with. Be specific: a Tuesday after work, an oyster night, a first-round-of-the-night pour, a gift for a boss.
3. The food. Two pairings, one obvious and one unexpected, using food people actually eat in [REGION].
4. One surprising detail. A story, a person, a number, or a mistake that made this product what it is. Something staff can say once and a guest can repeat to friends.
5. The bridge line. One sentence that connects this pour to the next one so the flight feels like a story, not a list.
6. Two objections and the answers. Write the answers the way a person talks, not the way a brochure reads.
Then write the close:
- A 45-second club ask that comes after the final pour, framed around what the guest already told you they liked during the tasting. It should sound like a recommendation, not a pitch. Give me three versions: one for a guest who loved everything, one for a guest who liked only one product, and one for a local who says they visit often.
- A specific bottle or pack recommendation to make before the club ask, so the guest buys something either way.
- The single question staff should ask early in the tasting that makes the close easier later.
Rules: write everything at a spoken reading level. No tasting-note vocabulary a guest would not use themselves. Contractions are fine. Cut any sentence that sounds like it came from a label.
When you are done, tell me which one of my products is hardest to sell based on what I gave you, and what I would need to change about the product, price, or position in the flight to fix it. Be blunt.
Format the output as one page per product so I can print it as staff cards.
Turn old emails and web copy into a one-page brand voice guide
The outcome: a single page that tells anyone on your team how your brand writes. Voice in one sentence, three traits with do-and-don't examples, the words you use and the words you ban, and five before-and-after rewrites pulled from your own copy.
The tool: Claude at claude.ai. Difficulty: Medium, because you need to paste your own writing in. Budget 20 minutes total.
First, gather the raw material. Open your email platform and copy the full text of three to five emails that sounded the most like you (club announcements, release day, a shipping delay apology). Then copy your About page and two or three product or SKU descriptions from your website. A distributor can swap in portfolio emails and a brand one-sheet. A retail shop can use shelf talkers and the last few newsletters. A brewery can use taproom board copy and a can description.
Start a new chat in Claude, paste the prompt, and paste your samples where the brackets tell you to. Claude will ask which version is the real voice when your samples disagree. Answer honestly, then ask for the final one-pager.
One caution: read the banned-words list before you send it out and strike anything that touches health, wellness, or medical claims.
You are a brand voice analyst who works with wineries, breweries, distilleries, and beverage distributors. Your job is to reverse-engineer how a brand already writes, then turn it into a one-page guide a part-time tasting room employee could follow on their first day.
My business: [BUSINESS NAME AND TYPE, e.g., Gard Estate Wines, a 9,000-case winery]
Region: [REGION, e.g., Columbia Valley, Washington]
Who we sell to: [WHO WE SELL TO, e.g., wine club members aged 45 to 70, plus on-premise accounts in Seattle and Portland]
The person whose writing sounds most like us: [PERSON AND ROLE, e.g., our owner, who writes the club letters]
Words, phrases, or claims we never use: [WORDS OR CLAIMS WE NEVER USE, e.g., never "luxury," never anything about health or wellness, never "world-class"]
Here are real samples of our writing.
EMAILS:
[PASTE 3 TO 5 FULL EMAILS: club announcement, release day, event invite, shipping delay, year-end thank you]
WEBSITE COPY:
[PASTE YOUR ABOUT PAGE AND 2 TO 3 PRODUCT OR SKU DESCRIPTIONS]
Step 1. Read the samples and tell me where they contradict each other. For example, one email is warm and first person while a product description is formal and third person, or one piece leads with scores and another avoids them. List up to five contradictions and, for each, ask me which version is the real us. Wait for my answers before writing the guide.
Step 2. After I answer, produce the guide. Keep it under 600 words so it fits on one page. Use these sections:
1. Our voice in one sentence.
2. Three voice traits. For each, give one "we write like this" example and one "we do not write like this" example, both about our actual products, not made-up brands.
3. Words we use and words we ban. Pull the "use" list from my samples. Add any jargon I lean on too hard and say what to use instead.
4. Sentence rules. Typical length, when we use contractions, first person or third person, how we open an email, how we close one.
5. How we talk about price, discounts, scarcity, and critic scores.
6. How we describe the liquid. Give three approved sentence patterns for a tasting note or product description that sound like us, and name the flowery habits to cut.
7. Channel notes: email subject lines, SMS, social captions, tasting room or shelf signage, and trade or distributor copy. One or two rules each.
8. Five before-and-after rewrites taken word for word from the samples I pasted, showing a weak line and a corrected line.
9. A 10-point checklist a new hire can run against any draft before it goes out.
Rules: use only evidence from my samples, do not invent facts about my business, and do not include any health, wellness, or medical language. If a sample is too thin to support a claim about our voice, say so and tell me what to paste in next.
End by asking me whether you should rewrite one of my recent emails using the finished guide so I can see it in action.
Variables to swap: [BUSINESS NAME AND TYPE], [REGION], [WHO WE SELL TO], [EMAIL SAMPLES], [WEBSITE COPY], [WORDS OR CLAIMS WE NEVER USE], [PERSON WHOSE WRITING SOUNDS MOST LIKE US].
Next step: save the one-pager in a Claude Project so every future chat writes in your voice automatically, and hand the PDF to your tasting room lead, your email writer, and any agency you pay.
Good output names specific words you actually overuse and shows rewrites you recognize as your own. If it reads like generic brand-strategy filler, your samples were too short: paste in more.
Turn a free SEO audit into a 30-day fix list you can hand to one person
Outcome: a full SEO audit of your site, then a 30-day fix list with each task assigned to a person, sized in minutes, and ordered by what moves bookings and online orders first.
Tool: Claude Cowork (now part of Claude), in the Claude desktop app. Difficulty: Advanced. It needs a paid plan and two setup steps. Claude Pro runs about $20 a month ($17 billed yearly); check Anthropic's pricing page before you sign up. Budget 10 to 30 minutes for the audit to run and another 15 minutes to work through the fix list.
Set it up once
Open the Claude desktop app and start a new Cowork prompt.
Type:
claude plugin marketplace add anthropics/knowledge-work-pluginsThen type:
claude plugin install MarketingType a single
/in the prompt box to see the skills the plugin added.Run:
/seo-audit [your website URL]
You get a Word document with ranked issues, missed keyword opportunities, competitor comparisons, and an action plan. Good, but long. Nobody on your team is going to work from a 20-page document.
So in the same Cowork session, right after the audit finishes, paste the prompt that turns it into assignments.
Variables to swap
[YOUR BUSINESS] and [CITY, REGION]
[WINERY / BREWERY / DISTILLERY / RETAIL SHOP / DISTRIBUTOR]
[TOP 3 REVENUE GOALS] (for example: tasting room reservations, club signups, online case sales)
[WHO DOES WHAT] (names and roles of everyone who could touch the site)
[HOURS PER WEEK] your team can actually give this
[PLATFORM] (Commerce7, Shopify, Squarespace, WordPress, whatever you run)
What to do with the output
Save the fix list as its own document, drop Week 1 into your project tool or a shared doc, and put a 20-minute Friday check-in on the calendar for four weeks. A distributor or retail shop runs the same play, swapping tasting room reservations for product page traffic and local search.
Good output looks like this: every task names a person, a page URL, a time estimate under 60 minutes, and a plain sentence on what it should do for traffic or conversion. If a line says "improve site speed" with no page and no owner, send it back and ask for specifics.
You are an SEO strategist who has worked on hundreds of beverage alcohol websites: wineries, breweries, distilleries, retail wine and spirits shops, and distributors. You just produced an SEO audit for my site. Now turn it into a 30-day execution plan my small team can actually finish.
My business:
- Name: [YOUR BUSINESS]
- Type: [WINERY / BREWERY / DISTILLERY / RETAIL SHOP / DISTRIBUTOR]
- Location: [CITY, REGION]
- Website platform: [PLATFORM, e.g. Commerce7, Shopify, WordPress, Squarespace]
- Top 3 revenue goals from the website: [TOP 3 REVENUE GOALS, e.g. tasting room reservations, wine club signups, online case sales]
- Who can do the work: [WHO DOES WHAT, e.g. Maria, tasting room manager, comfortable editing pages; Dave, owner, can write copy; outside developer available 2 hours a month]
- Time available: [HOURS PER WEEK] total across the team
Produce this, in order:
1. The Short List. Pull only the issues from the audit that plausibly affect my three revenue goals. Ignore anything that is technically true but will not change reservations, signups, or orders. Tell me what you cut and why, in two sentences.
2. The 30-Day Plan. Four weekly blocks. For each task give me: the task in one plain sentence, the exact page or URL it applies to, who on my team does it, estimated minutes, and the expected result stated in business terms (for example "our Visit page should start showing up for 'wine tasting near [CITY]' searches"). No task over 60 minutes. If something is bigger than that, break it into pieces. Keep the weekly total inside my available hours.
3. Week 1 First. Front-load the fixes that are fast and visible: page titles, meta descriptions, broken links, missing hours and address, reservation page clarity, product page copy.
4. Copy I Can Paste. For the five highest-value pages, write the actual new page title and meta description. Use real wine, beer, or spirits language and my city and region. No placeholders.
5. The Developer List. Separate out anything my team cannot do without technical help. Write it as a short scope I can email to a developer, with a time estimate for each item.
6. The Scoreboard. Name the four numbers I should check on day 30 and where to find each one. Tell me what a reasonable 30-day change looks like and what would mean the fixes did not work.
Rules: no SEO jargon without a plain-English explanation in the same sentence. Do not recommend new tools or paid software. If the audit did not give you enough information to assign a task responsibly, say so instead of guessing. At the end, ask me three questions that would make this plan sharper, then wait for my answers before revising.
Muse, Meta's free AI assistant, can audit the software you forgot you're paying for
Muse is Meta's new AI assistant, launched September 8. Nate B. Jones, writing in his Substack newsletter, asked it to work through his personal subscriptions. It identified $5,350 a year in subscription spending and has canceled $1,285 a year of it so far. He's clear that the $5,350 is future spending avoided, not a refund, and that not every subscription was waste.
Who it's for: whoever actually reads the card statement. Winery and brewery owners, GMs, controllers, and the DTC or marketing lead who has signed up for six tools in two years. Shop owners and distributor sales managers with a pile of per-seat apps.
The first job: pull the last 90 days of statements for every card the business uses, then have the assistant build one list of every recurring charge with the annual cost. You're hunting for the usual suspects: the email platform you kept running six months after switching CRMs, user seats for staff who left, reservation software for a tasting room you closed, two route-planning apps on the sales team, POS add-ons nobody uses.
Cost and setup: Muse reached the top of the US free iPhone chart ten days after launch, per Jones, and it's free to use. His prompts are written to work in Muse, Claude, or ChatGPT, so you can run the list-building part in whatever you already pay for. Check Meta's app listing for current availability and terms before you commit.
The catch: Amazon locked Muse out of its store, so coverage has holes. And as Jones points out, a free assistant that helps you cancel will eventually help you buy. Treat its recommendations accordingly, and never paste full card numbers.
Start with one card and one quarter. Even three dead subscriptions at $59 a month is $2,124 a year back.
You are my operations and finance analyst. I run a [winery / brewery / distillery / wine and spirits shop / distribution company] with [number] full-time employees and [number] of locations. I am auditing every recurring software and service subscription the business pays for.
I am pasting below the recurring charges from the last 90 days of our business card and bank statements. Card numbers are redacted.
[PASTE RECURRING CHARGE LINES: vendor name, date, amount]
Do this:
1. Build one table of every recurring charge: vendor, what it most likely does, monthly cost, annual cost. Flag any vendor you cannot confidently identify and ask me what it is instead of guessing.
2. Group them: ecommerce and club (for example Commerce7, Shopify), email and SMS, reservations and POS, compliance and shipping, design and social, accounting, and other.
3. Flag overlaps where we are likely paying twice for the same job, for example two email platforms after a CRM switch, or two reservation tools.
4. Sort every line into Cancel, Renegotiate, or Keep. For each Cancel, say what breaks if we turn it off and what we should export before we do.
5. For the top 5 by annual cost, give me three questions to ask the vendor on a renewal call, including whether an annual plan or a smaller seat count lowers the bill.
6. Write a short, polite cancellation message I can send or read over the phone, and a checklist to confirm the charge actually stopped on the next two statements.
Push back on me. If I say we need something, ask what it did for us in the last 90 days. Keep the whole thing in tables and short bullets. End with one number: total annual spend we could stop.
From the Editor:
I am always open to consulting, implementation, or brainstorming sessions. Just respond to this email, and I will get back to you shortly.
Alcohol Industry Insider Newsletter: the three-times-a-week growth newsletter for wine, beer, and spirits businesses that need smarter marketing, better sales, practical AI tools, and clear ideas they can implement now.
By Jeremy Young: serial entrepreneur, growth marketer, wine critic, and beverage industry insider.
Respond to this email with questions, ideas, or opportunities, and I will get back to you shortly!
Until next time,
Jeremy
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